The Maverick

by Diana Palmer

  She nodded absently.

  “Rick Marquez has been pretty visible, too,” he pointed out. He frowned. “Wasn’t Rick trying to convince Kilraven to let him reopen that murder case that involved his family?”

  “Come to think of it, yes,” she replied, stopping in front of the desk. “Kilraven refused. He said it would only resurrect all the pain, and the media would dine out on it. He and Jon both refused. They figured it was a random crime and the perp was long gone.”

  “But that wasn’t the end of it.”

  “No,” she said. “Marquez refused to quit. He promised to do his work on the QT and not reveal a word of it to anybody except the detective he brought in to help him sort through the old files.” She grimaced. “But the investigation went nowhere. Less than a week into their project, Marquez and his fellow detective were told to drop the investigation.”

  Hayes pursed his lips. “Now isn’t that interesting?”

  “There’s more,” she said. “Marquez and the detective went to the D.A. and promised to get enough evidence to reopen the case if they were allowed to continue. The D.A. said to let him talk to a few people. The very next week, the detective who was working with Marquez on the case was suddenly pulled off Homicide and sent back to the uniformed division as a patrol sergeant. And Marquez was told politely to keep his nose out of the matter and not to pursue it any further.”

  Hayes was frowning now. “You know, it sounds very much as if somebody high up doesn’t want that case reopened. And I have to ask why?”

  She nodded. “Somebody is afraid the case may be solved. If I’m guessing right, somebody with an enormous amount of power in government.”

  “And we both know what happens when power is abused,” Hayes said with a scowl. “Years ago, when I was still a deputy sheriff, one of my fellow deputies—a new recruit—decided on his own to investigate rumors of a house of prostitution being run out of a local motel. Like a lamb, he went to the county council and brought it up in an open meeting.”

  Alice grimaced, because she knew from long experience what most likely happened after that. “Poor guy!”

  “Well, after he was fired and run out of town,” Hayes said, “I was called in and told that I was not to involve myself in that case, if I wanted to continue as a deputy sheriff in this county. I’d made the comment that no law officer should be fired for doing his job, you see.”

  “What did you do?” she asked, because she knew Hayes. He wasn’t the sort of person to take a threat like that lying down.

  “Ran for sheriff and won,” he said simply. He grinned. “Turns out the head of the county council was getting kickbacks from the pimp. I found out, got the evidence and called a reporter I knew in San Antonio.”

  “That reporter?” she exclaimed. “He got a Pulitzer Prize for the story! My gosh, Hayes, the head of the county council went to prison! But it was for more than corruption…”

  “He and the pimp also ran a modest drug distribution ring,” he interrupted. “He’ll be going up before the parole board in a few months. I plan to attend the hearing.” He smiled. “I do so enjoy these little informal board meetings.”

  “Ouch.”

  “People who go through life making their money primarily through dishonest dealings don’t usually reform,” he said quietly. “It’s a basic character trait that no amount of well-meaning rehabilitation can reverse.”

  “We live among some very unsavory people.”

  “Yes. That’s why we have law enforcement. I might add, that the law enforcement on the county level here is exceptional.”

  She snarled at him. He just grinned.

  “What’s your next move?” she asked.

  “I’m not making one until I know what’s in that note. Shouldn’t your assistant have something by now, even if it’s only the text of the message?”

  “She should.” Alice pulled out her cell phone and called her office. “But I’m probably way off base about Kilraven’s involvement in this. Maybe the victim just ticked off the wrong people and paid for it. Maybe he had unpaid drug bills or something.”

  “That’s always a possibility,” Hayes had to agree.

  The phone rang and rang. Finally it was answered. “Crime lab, Longfellow speaking.”

  “Did you know that you have the surname of a famous poet?” Alice teased.

  The other woman was all business, all the time, and she didn’t get jokes. “Yes. I’m a far-removed distant cousin of the poet, in fact. You want to know about your scrap of paper, I suppose? It’s much too early for any analysis of the paper or ink…”

  “The writing, Longfellow, the writing,” Alice interrupted.

  “As I said, it’s too early in the analysis. We’d need a sample to compare, first, and then we’d need a handwriting expert…”

  “But what does the message say?” Alice blurted out impatiently. Honest to God, the other woman was so ponderously slow sometimes!

  “Oh, that. Just a minute.” There was a pause, some paper ruffling, a cough. Longfellow came back on the line. “It doesn’t say anything.”

  “You can’t make out the letters? Is it waterlogged, or something?”

  “It doesn’t have letters.”

  “Then what does it have?” Alice said with the last of her patience straining at the leash. She was picturing Longfellow on the floor with herself standing over the lab tech with a large studded bat…

  “It has numbers, Jones,” came the droll reply. “Just a few numbers. Nothing else.”

  “An address?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Give me the numbers.”

  “Only the last six are visible. The others apparently were obliterated by the man’s sweaty palms when he clenched it so tightly. Here goes.”

  She read the series of numbers.

  “Which ones were obliterated?” Alice asked.

  “Looks like the ones at the beginning. If it’s a telephone number, the area code and the first of the exchange numbers is missing. We’ll probably be able to reconstruct those at the FBI lab, but not immediately. Sorry.”

  “No, listen, you’ve been a world of help. If I controlled salaries, you’d get a raise.”

  “Why, thank you, Jones,” came the astonished reply. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

  “You’re very welcome. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”

  “Of course I will.”

  Alice hung up. She looked at the numbers and frowned.

  “What have you got?” Hayes asked.

  “I’m not sure. A telephone number, perhaps.”

  He moved closer and peered at the paper where she’d written those numbers down. “Could that be the exchange?” he asked, noting some of the numbers.

  “I don’t know. If it is, it could be a San Antonio number, but we’d need to have the area code to determine that, and it’s missing.”

  “Get that lab busy.”

  She glowered at him. “Like we sleep late, take two-hour coffee breaks, and wander into the crime lab about noon daily!”

  “Sorry,” he said, and grinned.

  She pursed her full lips and gave him a roguish look. “Hey, you law enforcement guys live at doughnut shops and lounge around in the office reading sports magazines and playing games on the computer, right?”

  He glowered back.

  She held out one hand, palm up. “Welcome to the stereotype club.”

  “When will she have some more of those numbers?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Has anybody spoken to the woman whose car was stolen to ask if someone she knew might have taken it? Or to pump her for information and find out if she really loaned it to him?” she added shrewdly.

  “No, nobody’s talked to her. The feds in charge of the investigation wanted to wait until they had enough information to coax her into giving them something they needed,” he said.

  “As we speak, they’re roping Jon Blackhawk to his desk chair and gagging him,” she prono
unced with a grin. “His first reaction would be to drag her downtown and grill her.”

  “He’s young and hotheaded. At least to hear his brother tell it.”

  “Kilraven loves his brother,” Alice replied. “But he does know his failings.”

  “I wouldn’t call rushing in headfirst a failing,” Hayes pointed out.

  “That’s why you’ve been shot, Hayes,” she said.

  “Anybody can get shot,” he said.

  “Yes, but you’ve been shot twice,” she reminded him. “The word locally is that you’d have a better chance of being named king of some small country than you’d have getting a wife. Nobody around here is rushing to line up and become a widow.”

  “I’ve calmed down,” he muttered defensively. “And who’s been saying that, anyway?”

  “I heard that Minette Raynor was,” she replied without quite meeting his eyes.

  His jaw tautened. “I have no desire to marry Miss Raynor, now or ever,” he returned coldly. “She helped kill my brother.”

  “She didn’t, and you have proof, but suit yourself,” she said when he looked angry enough to say something unforgivable. “Now, do you have any idea how we can talk to that woman before somebody shuts her up? It looks like whoever killed that poor man on the river wouldn’t hesitate to give him company. I’d bet my reputation that he knew something that could bring down someone powerful, and he was stopped dead first. If the woman has any info at all, she’s on the endangered list.”

  “Good point,” Hayes had to admit. “Do you have a plan?”

  She shook her head. “I wish.”

  “About that number, you might run it by the 911 operators,” he said. “They deal with a lot of telephone traffic. They might recognize it.”

  “Now that’s constructive thinking,” she said with a grin. “But this isn’t my jurisdiction, you know.”

  “The crime was committed in the county. That’s my jurisdiction. I’m giving you the authority to investigate.”

  “Won’t your own investigator feel slighted?”

  “He would if he was here,” he sighed. “He took his remaining days off and went to Wyoming for Christmas. He said he’d lose them if he didn’t use them by the end of the year. I couldn’t disagree and we didn’t have much going on when I let him go.” He shook his head. “He’ll punch me when he gets back and discovers that we had a real DB right here and he didn’t get to investigate it.”

  “The way things look,” she said slowly, “he may still get to help. I don’t think we’re going to solve this one in a couple of days.”

  “Hey, I saw a murder like this one on one of those CSI shows,” he said with pretended excitement. “They sent trace evidence out, got results in two hours and had the guy arrested and convicted and sent to jail just before the last commercial!”

  She gave him a smile and a gesture that was universal before she picked up her purse, and the slip of paper, and left his office.

  She was eating lunch at Barbara’s Café in town when the object of her most recent daydreams walked in, tall and handsome in real cowboy duds, complete with a shepherd’s coat, polished black boots and a real black Stetson cowboy hat with a brim that looked just like the one worn by Richard Boone in the television series Have Gun Will Travel that she used to watch videos of. It was cocked over his eyes and he looked as much like a desperado as he did a working cowboy.

  He spotted Alice as he was paying for his meal at the counter and grinned at her. She turned over a cup of coffee and it spilled all over the table, which made his grin much bigger.

  Barbara came running with a towel. “Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” she reassured Alice. She glanced at Harley, put some figures together and chuckled. “Ah, romance is in the air.”

  “It is not,” Alice said firmly. “I offered to take him to a movie, but I’m broke, and he won’t go dutch treat,” she added in a soft wail.

  “Aww,” Barbara sympathized.

  “I don’t get paid until next Friday,” Alice said, dabbing at wet spots on her once-immaculate oyster-white wool slacks. “I’ll be miles away by then.”

  “I get paid this Friday,” Harley said, straddling a chair opposite Alice with a huge steak and fries on a platter. “Are you having a salad for lunch?” he asked, aghast at the small bowl at her elbow. “You’ll never be able to do any real investigating on a diet like that. You need protein.” He indicated the juicy, rare steak on his own plate.

  Alice groaned. He didn’t understand. She’d spent so many hours working in her lab that she couldn’t really eat a steak anymore. It was heresy here in Texas, so she tended to keep her opinions to herself. If she said anything like that, there would be a riot in Barbara’s Café.

  So she just smiled. “Fancy seeing you here,” she teased.

  He grinned. “I’ll bet it wasn’t a surprise,” he said as he began to carve his steak.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asked with pretended innocence.

  “I was just talking to Hayes Carson out on the street and he happened to mention that you asked him where I ate lunch,” he replied.

  She huffed. “Well, that’s the last personal question I’ll ever ask him, and you can take that to the bank!”

  “Should I mention that I asked him where you ate lunch?” he added with a twinkle in his pale eyes.

  Alice’s irritated expression vanished. She sighed. “Did you, really?” she asked.

  “I did, really. But don’t take that as a marriage proposal,” he said. “I almost never propose to crime scene investigators over lunch.”

  “Crime scene investigators?” a cowboy from one of the nearby ranches exclaimed, leaning toward them. “Listen, I watch those shows all the time. Did you know that they can tell time of death by…!”

  “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry!” Alice exclaimed as the cowboy gaped at her. She’d “accidentally” poured a glass of iced tea all over him. “It’s a reflex,” she tried to explain as Barbara came running, again. “You see, every time somebody talks about the work I do, I just get all excited and start throwing things!” She picked up her salad bowl. “It’s a helpless reflex, I just can’t stop…”

  “No problem!” the cowboy said at once, scrambling to his feet. “I had to get back to work anyway! Don’t think a thing about it!”

  He rushed out the door, trailing tea and ice chips, leaving behind half a cup of coffee and a couple of bites of pie and an empty plate.

  Harley was trying not to laugh, but he lost it completely. Barbara was chuckling as she motioned to one of her girls to get a broom and pail.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice told her. “Really.”

  Barbara gave her an amused glance. “You don’t like to talk shop at the table, do you?”

  “No. I don’t,” she confessed.

  “Don’t worry,” Barbara said as the broom and pail and a couple of paper towels were handed to her. “I’ll make sure word gets around. Before lunch tomorrow,” she added, still laughing.

  Four

  After that, nobody tried to engage Alice in conversation about her job. The meal was pleasant and friendly. Alice liked Harley. He had a good personality, and he actually improved on closer acquaintance, as so many people didn’t. He was modest and unassuming, and he didn’t try to monopolize the conversation.

  “How’s your investigation coming?” he asked when they were on second cups of black coffee.

  She shrugged. “Slowly,” she replied. “We’ve got a partial number, possibly a telephone number, a stolen car whose owner didn’t know it was stolen and a partial sneaker track that we’re hoping someone can identify.”

  “I saw a program on the FBI lab that showed how they do that,” Harley replied. He stopped immediately as soon as he realized what he’d said. He sat with his fork poised in midair, eyeing Alice’s refilled coffee mug.

  She laughed. “Not to worry. I’ll control my reflexes. Actually the lab does a very good job running down sneaker treads,” she added. “The problem
is that most treads are pretty common. You get the name of a company that produces them and then start wearing out shoe leather going to stores and asking for information about people who bought them.”

  “What about people who paid cash and there’s no record of their buying them?”

  “I never said investigation techniques were perfect,” she returned, smiling. “We use what we can get.”

  He frowned. “Those numbers, it shouldn’t be that hard to isolate a telephone number, should it? You could narrow it down with a computer program.”

  “Yes, but there are so many possible combinations, considering that we don’t even have the area code.” She groaned. “And we’ll have to try every single one.”

  He pursed his lips. “The car, then. Are you sure the person who owned it didn’t have a connection to the murder victim?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Ever considered a career in law enforcement?”

  He laughed. “I did, once. A long time ago.” He grimaced, as if the memory wasn’t a particularly pleasant one.

  “We’re curious about the car,” she said, “but they don’t want to spook the car’s owner. It turns out that she works for a particularly unpleasant member of the political community.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Who?”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on. I’m a clam. Ask my boss.”

  “Okay. It’s the senior U.S. senator from Texas who lives in San Antonio,” she confessed.

  Harley made an ungraceful movement and sat back in his chair. He stared toward the window without really seeing anything. “You think the politician may be connected in some way?”

  “There’s no way of knowing right now,” she sighed. “Everybody big in political circles has people who work for them. Anybody can get involved with a bad person and not know it.”

  “Are they going to question the car owner?”

  “I’m sure they will, eventually. They just want to pick the right time to do it.”

  He toyed with his coffee cup. “So, are you staying here for a while?”

  She grimaced. “A few more days, just to see if I can develop any more leads. Hayes Carson wants me to look at the car while the lab’s processing it, so I guess I’ll go up to San Antonio for that and come back here when I’m done.”